Kill the Clichés

So you’ve decided to write a story. Yay! Congratulations. First step complete.

Now. While you can write about shiny vampires and zombie apocalypses all you want to, just so you know, I won’t read them. Why? You need to come up with something original to make your story stand out.

Kill the clichés.

But say you really wanted to write about a wizard school. Okay. Fine. But you sure as heck had better come up with something that’ll make your readers think, Oh. Okay. So this isn’t a complete cop-out of Harry Potter.

And how the heck do you do that?

As writers, we need to be creative. Sorry, but there is no way to get around it. If you want to write about Harry Po—about wizards, you’ll have your work cut out for you.

But don’t worry! Remember: A story isn’t comprised of a single idea. You need a setting and characters. Subplots. Themes. You can do this. We can do this.

Continuing with the wizard idea, let’s make a new story that’s completely different than Harry Potter. But it will still center on a boy who goes to wizard school.

Setting: Underwater. Duh. That’s why we non-magical folk haven’t found the wizards yet: They’re buried under the ocean. Of course, this’ll open up a few more opportunities, too. How do the wizards get oxygen? Do they have gills? Do they even need oxygen?

Protagonist: Harry Potter’s noble. He’s the all-around hero. So let’s do the opposite of that: In our wizard story, our protagonist will be the antagonist. Mean, creepy, clumsy, and loaded with sarcastic comments. He’ll be tall. Gauntly. But he can’t have black hair. Nope. How about…blonde? And icy blue eyes. And crooked teeth.

Subplots: Wait. We didn’t actually discuss our main plot here. Okay. So, say our protagonist wants to exploit the school and show it to all of the non-magical folk. That’s not a very creative idea, but whatever. We’ve got subplots on our side. Why? Because we need a “why.” Why would our protagonist want to show the school to the non-magical folk? What’s his back story? And who tries to stop him? How does this person (or group of people) find out about our protagonist’s plans?

Themes: What sort of a message do we want to send to our readers? What should they learn after reading this story? Maybe that change is good. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad thing if the non-magical people found out about the wizards. Or, perhaps if our protagonist fails in his mission, that failure isn’t always the end of the world.

Okay. So we have our story outline complete (though it is rather bare). Does this sound anything like Harry Potter? No. Not at all. (And, by the way, if anyone wants to write this story, feel free. Just make sure that you give me a link to the finished copy—because I would love to read it.)

What we have here is a three-dimensional story idea that actually might turn out somewhat okay if someone decided to write it. And the best part? It’s original.

Interestingly enough, I wanted to write a fantasy about underwater elves once. It was mostly about a rouge boy of about seventeen who goes out into another faction's realm to...do assassin-y things and start a huge war.

It was set in our world, in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and it was a small race that have kept themselves clear from the humans, and we don't see any humans there.

The protag was scrawny, mean-looking, with a demonic-fish-like face, glowing green eyes, sharp pointy teeth, gills located on the neck, slime-green colored hair and scaley blue skin. He had webbings on his three feet and toes, and a tal that helped him swim faster.

EDIT: Though I do feel the need to point out that there are stories about underwater civilizations, so someone could take your idea and say, "Oh, wow, yet another story about an underwater world."

My idea is to take the cliche and add your own spin to it. Everything's going to sound like everything else at its core. It's how you spin it that makes it yours. In the Fallout universe, zombies are 'ghouls' who were us but had been blasted by radiation.

Being inventive is a huge task, but it’s not exactly an impossible feat.
I agree everything in your post. It’s not good enough to copy others and simply change the names and places. It will always be what you based your idea on. No point basing an idea from someone else’s mind.
Who knows how much of writing is imagination, and how much of it simply our own personality. Reading a book is an easy thing to do! But the process of how it’s done is a colossal undertaking

Interestingly enough, I wanted to write a fantasy about underwater elves once. It was mostly about a rouge boy of about seventeen who goes out into another faction's realm to...do assassin-y things and start a huge war.

It was set in our world, in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and it was a small race that have kept themselves clear from the humans, and we don't see any humans there.

The protag was scrawny, mean-looking, with a demonic-fish-like face, glowing green eyes, sharp pointy teeth, gills located on the neck, slime-green colored hair and scaley blue skin. He had webbings on his three feet and toes, and a tal that helped him swim faster.

EDIT: Though I do feel the need to point out that there are stories about underwater civilizations, so someone could take your idea and say, "Oh, wow, yet another story about an underwater world."

My idea is to take the cliche and add your own spin to it. Everything's going to sound like everything else at its core. It's how you spin it that makes it yours. In the Fallout universe, zombies are 'ghouls' who were us but had been blasted by radiation.

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I like your story idea! And your point (that someone could take my idea and say, "Oh, wow, yet another story about an underwater world") is interesting. I hate to admit it, but it's true.

So maybe there's another lesson here.

I tried to show a simple way of developing a story idea; however, I didn't want to take the time to develop the entire idea. If I had chosen to completely develop it, then I'd want to write the story, and I wouldn't want to publish this blog post lest other people take my plot.

This post, then, I guess, is a beginning. It shows how to help you avoid cliches by developing your story and making it more 3-D. If you take one idea (say a boy who goes to wizard school...or an underwater world) and run with it, people will think of a story that already exists. However, if you take two seemingly unrelated topics and mesh them together, you've got the start of creativity. Then you need to ask questions so that you can answer how they're related. Put your own spin to it, as you said.

Being inventive is a huge task, but it’s not exactly an impossible feat.
I agree everything in your post. It’s not good enough to copy others and simply change the names and places. It will always be what you based your idea on. No point basing an idea from someone else’s mind.
Who knows how much of writing is imagination, and how much of it simply our own personality. Reading a book is an easy thing to do! But the process of how it’s done is a colossal undertaking

Kill the Clichés

Nice post!

Andrew.

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Thank you!

And you're right - reading a book is an easy thing to do. Right now I'm reading Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card, and it's amazing. Fantabulicious. It only took me two days to read the first book, Ender's Game, but how long did it take Card to write it?